Comment by vjvjvjvjghv
1 day ago
You could also list plenty of horror stories where people went to medical professionals and got screwed over. There is this myth that people can go to doctors and get perfect attention and treatment. Reality is far from that
There’s the concept of “personal advocacy” when receiving healthcare. Unfortunately, you’ll only get the best outcomes if you continually seek out treatment with diligence and patience.
But framing it as a “myth [of] perfect attention and treatment” sounds a bit like delegitimizing the entire healthcare industry in a way that makes me raise my eyebrow.
"But framing it as a “myth [of] perfect attention and treatment” sounds a bit like delegitimizing the entire healthcare industry in a way that makes me raise my eyebrow."
It doesn't delegitimize the whole industry. It points out real problems. A lot of patients are not given enough attention and don't get the correct treatment because the doctors didn't listen but rushed through things.
I was criticizing the rhetoric, not the sentiment. I’m skeptical of an argument when it flies too close to what I associate with irrationality and pseudoscience, especially considering what’s happened in medicine over the past 5 years.
The “myth [of] perfect attention and treatment” is an easy strawman for grifters and conmen to take advantage of: see RFK Jr.
Id say the Healthcare industry works hard but is probably working at like 20% of their possible productivity due to systemic issues.
How do you measure productivity? Profit per employee has never been higher, probably, as PE and other rent-seeking leeches (residency caps) have wrapped their fingers around the throat of the industry.
Positive outcomes per patient is probably also higher, due to research and technology advances. So many lives saved that would have been written off just a decade or two ago (e.g. spina bifida).
But I agree with you that there’s a hypothetical universe where seeking healthcare as an American doesn’t suck, I just don’t know if “productive” is the right word to describe it.
Yes, there's been a tension between personal advocacy and the system for a long time. Doctors roll there eyes when a patient mentions they self diagnosed on WebMD. LLM's will accelerate self diagnosis immensely. This has the potential to help patients, but it is just a starting point. Of course, it should be verified from actual trained doctors.
Agreed, I described it elsewhere in this thread as K-shaped outcomes.
A big part of the legal implications of LLMs and AI in general is about accountability.
If you are treated by a human being and it goes sideways, you could sue them and/or the hospital. Now, granted, you may not always win, it may take some time, but there is some chance.
If you are "treated" by an LLM and it goes sideways, good luck trying to sue OpenAI or whoever is running the model. It's not a coincidence that LLM providers are trying to put disclaimers and/or claims in their ToS that LLM advice is not necessarily good.
Same goes for privacy. Doctors and hospital are regulated in a way that you have a reasonable, often very strong, expectation of privacy. Consider doctor-patient confidentiality, for example. This doesn't mean that there is no leak, but you can hold someone accountable. If you send your medical data to ChatGPT and there is a leak, are you going to sue OpenAI?
The answer in both cases is, yes, you should probably be able to sue an LLM provider. But because LLM providers have a lot of money (way more than any hospital!), are usually global (jurisdiction could be challenging) and, often, they say themselves that LLM advice is not necessarily good (which doctors cannot say that easily), you may find that way more challenging than suing a doctor or a hospital.
Are medical professionals not usually held accountable, globally speaking?
Lawsuits against medical professionals are difficult in many cases impossible for the average person to win. They are held less accountable compared to other professions.
> They are held less accountable compared to other professions.
I have no idea what other professions you’re talking about. Doctors are the only professionals where it’s common for multi million dollar judgements to be awarded against individuals. In may cases, judgements larger than their malpractice insurance limits.
Take a doctor working alone overnight in the ER. They are responsible for every single thing that happens. One of the 4 NPs that they are supposed to have time to supervise while they are stuck sedating a kid for ortho to work on makes a mistake—the doctor is the one that’s getting sued. A nurse misinterprets an order and gives too much of something, doctor is getting sued. Doesn’t matter if it’s their fault or not. Literally ever single one of the dozens of patients that comes in with a runny nose or a tummy ache, or a headache is their responsibility and could cost them their house. And there are far too many patients for them to actually supervise fully. They have to trust and delegate, but in practice they are still 100% on the hook for mistakes. For accepting this responsibility they might get $10 per NP patient that they supervise.
Healthcare professionals also occasionally face criminal prosecution for mistakes at a level that wouldn’t even be me a career in other professions.
> Lawsuits against medical professionals are difficult in many cases impossible for the average person to win
Malpractice attorneys operate on contingency, so they’re more accessible to the average person than most kinds of attorneys. It’s one of the many reasons healthcare is so expensive in the US.
It’s harder for a doctor to get fired for saying showing up late to work than it is for a cook at McDonald’s I guess, but compared to other professionals? I’ve seen software engineers regularly skip through companies leaving disasters in their wake for their entire careers. MBAs regularly destroy companies, lawyers and finance bros get away with murder, and police officers literally get away with murder.
The only profession that faces anywhere near the accountability that doctors do that I can think of might be civil engineers.